The Hanover Scene

E Pluribus Unum

What an extraordinary burden Dartmouth bears: all this love. I remember a specific moment late last spring, when I was standing by the garden in front of Blunt, looking across the campus, on a morning with perfect weather, at a time when students were going from one class to another, and the strange thought came into my head, "This is where the trouble lies. So many people love this place so much, and they are so different."

That's one part of my theme on this occasion; the other brings a roughly symmetrical paragraph.

What an extraordinary blessing the United States of America enjoys: all this love. I remember a specific moment early this summer, when I was standing on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, looking across New York Harbor, on an evening with perfect weather, at the time when the Statue of Liberty was about to be relighted, and the moving thought came into my head, "This is where the glory lies. So many people love this place so much, and they are so different."

Now, of course, I could have chosen different times and places, and I could have reversed the modes: I could have written about this College on the day on which Dave McLaughlin was inaugurated, and then it would have been Dartmouth for which love was a blessing, and about which one would have said, "This is where the glory lies." I could have written about this country on the day when construction workers attacked anti-war demonstrators in New York, and then it would have been the United States for which love was a burden, and about which one would have said, "This is where the trouble lies." I could have chosen those earlier times, but this column is intended to be topical, and so, inevitably, I am writing about Dartmouth at a time when the going is tough, at a time when this love that is ordinarily a principal source of the College's sturdy health has become one cause of its current acute malaise.

Do I have any good reason for offering these reflections on the way love can have such different effects? (On how, as Ms. Midler reminds us, it can be a river, a razor, a hunger, or a flower?) Well yes, I have two.

The first is the more important and obvious. Just as this great country has had more to celebrate than to anguish over, more time when love is an underpinning of unity rather than a source of discord, so too has this great College, older than the country it enhances by its presence. And just as courage, wisdom, and integrity have always in the past been found in sufficient measure to bring the United States through times of crisis, so too will they be found at Dartmouth. Too much is at stake to allow any other belief.

The second may seem, at first, to be a bit of self-indulgent sentimentality and there-fore out of place. You just have to take my word for it that it's not any such thing. I simply want to put in a word, in both contexts, for the immigrants, for I am one in both of them. But whereas the immigrant can become a fully enfranchised member of the American community, if he chooses to be naturalized, those of us who love this institution as we have never loved our almaematres have recently been reminded that we will always be outsiders at a crucial time. Honorary M.A.'s don't count; umpteen years of dues-paying membership in the classes that adopted us make no difference: we in the faculty and administration who love this institution, who have given most of our adult lifetimes to it, who are indebted to it for some of the richest friendships we shall ever enjoy, who care deeply about its health and welfare, had to sit on the sidelines when the balloting for trustees was done, even though we had as much at stake in the outcome as most, and more than many.

Do you doubt that there are people such as I have described? Do you remember Joe McDonald, Warner Bentley, Stearns Morse, Sidney Cox, Thad Seymour (the list could go on and on) all people whose devotion to Dartmouth could not have been greater than it was, even if they had graduated here? And was not less than that of even the most devoted of alumni? Do you think that their counterparts are absent from this current faculty and administration? Far from being absent, I would say with the utmost conviction that such people are present in larger numbers than ever before, now that higher percentages of both constituencies are not alumni. And the fact that most "immigrant" members of the faculty love this College as deeply as most immigrant members of American society love this nation, is one of the most distinctive, not to say precious, truths about Dartmouth. Nor is it surprising, given the qualities that inspire love here.

It will be a sorry day if either group of newcomers is ever made to feel that they are not valued, or that they have no legitimate right to a voice in the affairs of these blessed communities to which they have brought their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.